Last month Housing, Regeneration and Heritage Minister Huw Lewis praised local housing association Tai Ceredigion after the latest i2i report was launched at the Chartered Institute of Housing Cymru’s annual conference in Cardiff.
The housing association has successfully piloted the Welsh Government’s “i2i Can-Do Toolkit 2 – SME friendly procurement” to source local contractors and small businesses for maintenance and improvement works to their tenants’ homes.
The report looks over the last three years and shows that 2,581 job and training opportunities have been created by 26 organisations that have adopted the model, almost 1,400 of them in the last year. The figure equates to 15 opportunities per week, many of which are in the most disadvantaged communities in Wales.
Speaking at the conference the Housing, Regeneration and Heritage Minister Huw Lewis said “I am very proud of the achievements we and our partners have made in the housing sector thanks to the Can Do Toolkit. It is a shining example of what can be done to harness the wider benefits of contracts, resulting in local unemployed adults and young people having the opportunity to receive training and work experience, which is essential to be able to compete in today’s jobs market.”
Llyr Edwards, Tai Ceredigion’s Director of Property Services said “The toolkit has been an invaluable guide on making targeted recruitment and training a condition of the contracts. Our clear objective was to develop the local pound and maximise the spend from our housing investment. Therefore the decision was made to procure contractors for the Welsh Housing Quality Standard (WHQS) improvement works by using a framework as opposed to the main contractor model. We were able to break down the WHQS work into three defined lots in terms of value which meant bidders with different turnovers could apply for the appropriate lot. We held two ‘Meet the Buyer’ days in order for contractors to gain more information about the process and hear what was expected of them in their applications.
In awarding the contracts staff, tenants and Board members were all involved in scoring tender documents and interviewing contractors. We successfully appointed 20 contractors which included 15 Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) and have 8 apprentices employed by Tai Ceredigion under a shared apprenticeship scheme with the framework contractors. Other staff has been recruited to oversee the improvement programme with 6 Resident Liaison Advisors ensuring tenant satisfaction and 2 Project Managers with 6 Maintenance Surveyors directly managing the programme of works. Here at Tai Ceredigion we pride ourselves on using local trade people and contractors where possible and believe it is paramount to the local economy.”
